Events
Events
Founded in 2013, Stella’s Child exists to support Indonesian youths from deeply disadvantaged backgrounds as they prepare to leave children's homes and orphanages and enter the world of work. We equip these youths, aged 12-19, with the skills they need to succeed in life and break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families. We are an efficient and effective grassroots organization. Our innovative, interlinked programs provide the life skills, real world business experience and employment connections necessary to access job opportunities they would otherwise be denied.
Too many disadvantaged youths enter the Indonesian workforce under prepared and under skilled. Through our business-minded approach to positive youth development, we help young people rediscover their dreams or create new ones, then work with them to develop the necessary experience to make them real. Our entrepreneurship program enables participants to learn business by doing business. We then connect participants with highly skilled mentors and forward-thinking companies looking for talent. All of this enables these youths to succeed on their own terms, through their own abilities.
Supporting Stella's Child is an investment in the potential of the children we work with and in the future of Indonesia.
Meet the Team
Timothy J. Cameron
Founder and Executive Director
Tim spent 25 years working at senior levels in education and financial services in the USA, including running his own successful businesses. He became a recognized expert in senior management, strategic planning and development, creative problem solving and team building, and served as Chief of Staff in the United States Department of Education.
In 2013, he travelled around South East Asia. As an education expert he was distressed by the drastic inequalities in education in the countries he visited, and how this led to poverty being repeated through generations. At the same time, he began to realize how many entrepreneurs and professionals from around the world were based in the region, and were eager to do something to help tackle inequality. He realized that matching this developed talent with the undeveloped talent of South East Asia’s children might be part of the solution to the limited opportunities he had observed, and the idea for Stella’s Child was born.
Inspired, he left the corporate world, sold his possessions and moved to Bali to set up Stella’s Child with his own money. His strategic, ambitious, results driven approach saw the organization rapidly expand from working with 15 children to almost 300 just 3 years later. The network of expert volunteers who have signed up to support his vision and help mentor the children to become entrepreneurs and dynamic potential employees has grown by 200%, and include representatives from more than 20 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The Stella’s Child programs he developed and implemented have borne extraordinary results, and led to 100% of its graduates going on to find meaningful employment - with earnings exponentially higher than the national minimum wage. Driven by Tim’s passion, vision strategic thinking, management expertise and creativity, Stella’s Child has only just begun.
I Komang Andreas
Office Administrator and Creative Artist
Born in Karangasem Village, Bali, Andre, age 18, has the dream to start his own business designing and art work. Andre is a graduate of the 2014 and 2015 Stella’s Child Entrepreneurship Program where he developed his talents in the areas of design and business. He currently serves as a mentor to younger youth in the program to share his knowledge and talents in product design, leadership and communications.
Board of Directors
Candice A. Geary
Chair
Ms. Geary served in various supervisory and managerial roles throughout an extensive career in the non-profit education sector. She retired as Vice President of Client Relations for Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc. in 2008.
Ms. Geary served as liaison between institutions of higher education, private lenders and the Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board and Wisconsin Higher Education Corporation from 1976 to 1984.
During her career, she led a national student loan industry initiative for setting common data exchange standards for 3 years, served as team lead in several operational, new product development and industry relations initiatives between the private sector and the U.S. Department of Education. She also successfully managed marketing initiatives nationwide to schools and lenders for Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation and helped grow the organization from a state corporation to a national entity.
Kristie A. Hansen
Treasurer & Secretary
Ms. Hansen has had an extensive legal career since earning her law degree from Boston University in 1975. After several legal positions in Colorado, including work for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, Ms. Hansen began serving the higher education community in traditional and not-traditional roles. Most notably, she has worked in the Czech Republic and with the World Bank in Hungary. For nearly the last decade in her career, she worked for the United States Department of Education in Washington DC.
Ms. Hansen is currently a volunteer with the Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA) organization, assists with Women for Women International, and volunteers at St. John’s Episcopal Church as Chair of their Pastoral Care Committee and as a Eucharistic Minister.
Holly Woodbury
Vice Chair
Holly Woodbury is currently the Vice President, Development, at Chapman Partnership where she executes the fundraising, marketing and volunteer strategies for the organization. In September of 2010, Holly moved to Florida from Denver, Colorado to begin working at Chapman Partnership. Since her arrival at Chapman Partnership, Holly’s leadership and energy have synergized the external communication for the organization and proven to increase fundraising, volunteer activities and brand awareness in the community for this nationally recognized homeless service organization. Prior to her time leading the development department for Chapman Partnership’s homeless assistance centers, Holly developed fundraising and marketing campaigns for Denver Parks & Recreation, Women’s Bean Project, the Rocky Mountain Chapter of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Colorado AIDS Project and the Red Cross Mile High Chapter.
Advisory Council for Asia-Pacific Initiatives
International Relations & Communications
Tazeen Imran
Washington, D.C., USA
Tazeen Imran is passionate about continuous learning and bringing cognitively diverse people together to strengthen organizations. She has previously worked as a management consultant, serving clients across the U.S. government and has a breadth of experience in change management and communications. She has also been involved in transformation efforts that include transitioning a workforce from a tenure-based compensation system to a merit-based one, redesigning organizational processes to better serve people and drive strategic goals, and bringing disparate stakeholders together to develop key policies. She has also served as the communications lead for a project focused on redefining workplace culture by recognizing that everyone is a leader who drives broader transformation efforts. When not at work, she enjoys reading about human behavior and cultures, exploring cities, being a foodie and trying to find some zen through meditation or bikram yoga.
Finance & Audit
Claudio Kodama
São Paulo, Brazil
Claudio Kodama recently served as a volunteer for Stella’s Child helping on financial and internal audit processes. His major is in Business Administration and he earned his MBA in Corporate Finance. He has experience in external and internal audit, controlling and business partnering. He worked for 4 years as senior auditor at Deloitte and for 11 years as financial senior manager at Unilever, starting in Brazil (Sao Paulo), moving to United States (Miami) and United Kingdom (London). He joined some charitable activities around the world including Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. In Unilever Brazil he joined the program for young talents where he was mentor of one young boy less fortunate and today this boy is graduated in Engineering and working for Unilever. During travels in Americas and European countries, he joined boys and girls schools activities in US, Costa Rica and UK. He also helped the Global Unilever Foundation to disseminate the ambassador program around the world using his image.
e-Learning Initiatives
Diane Lippman
Seattle, WA, USA
Diane Lippman is currently a Project Manager and Senior Instructional Designer with GP Strategies where she supports clients in the management of large-scale training design, development and deployment. Diane is also a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and has supported both public and private sectors with continuous process improvement initiatives. Diane was born in the District of Columbia and grew up in Michigan. She worked for the big 3 automakers when love brought her to Florida. Diane and her husband Drew, a retired school architect, recently relocated to Seattle, Washington where they enjoy living in the Pacific Northwest with their dog Sherlock. Diane is a volunteer with a number of organizations, including the Puget Sound Chapter of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the American Diabetes Association; the ALS Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Heart Association and many other organizations that support feeding the hungry, teaching people to read, among others. Diane loves to hike, walk and be in nature whenever possible. Diane loves to write poetry in her spare time.
Creative Learning
Creative Learning
Saša Kerkoš
Europe/Asia
Saša Kerkoš currently lives and works between Ljubljana, Helsinki and Bali. She is an initiator of the Slovenian contemporary illustration platform supporting creative youth communities for advocating design as driving force behind societal and economic change. Sasa's background in visual communication and concept development and creative direction is allowing her to work cross-fields in multi-disciplinary teams on various topics. She is a collaborations initiator, working on a diverse range of projects that can improve creative and innovative ideas to build more tolerant, sustainable and open environments. She works towards open knowledge exchange and collaboration. She is the main member of the NGO team Tretaroka. At the moment she is researching emotions, compassion and empathy in visual communication and how they can influence design processes landscapes. Her workshops and lectures were hosted at Pratt NYC, AALTO Helsinki, October Salon Belgrade, Royal College of Art London, and University Ljubljana.
Local Ambassador
Ian Kussmana
Bali, Indonesia
Ian Kussmana was born, raised, and is living and working in Bali. A graduate of the Architecture Department of Udayana University in Bali, Ian has a lot of passion in the Entertainment and Event management industry; a passion he found while studying in University. Through his work on various events and through his position as Entertainment Coordinator at Hard Rock Hotel Bali, Ian has developed strong organizational and event management skills. Besides organizing the events, Ian also performing DJ act on regular and special events at the hotel. Ian has extensive experience working with a diverse population of program sponsors, entertainers and production suppliers. He brings that experience along with his knowledge of Indonesia to Stella's Child both as a regular volunteer and through his position as Local Ambassador.
Fundraising & Grant Oversight
Holly Woodbury
Miami, FL, USA
Holly Woodbury is currently the Vice President, Development, at Chapman Partnership where she executes the fundraising, marketing and volunteer strategies for the organization. In September of 2010, Holly moved to Florida from Denver, Colorado to begin working at Chapman Partnership. Since her arrival at Chapman Partnership, Holly’s leadership and energy have synergized the external communication for the organization and proven to increase fundraising, volunteer activities and brand awareness in the community for this nationally recognized homeless service organization. Prior to her time leading the development department for Chapman Partnership’s homeless assistance centers, Holly developed fundraising and marketing campaigns for Denver Parks & Recreation, Women’s Bean Project, the Rocky Mountain Chapter of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Colorado AIDS Project and the Red Cross Mile High Chapter.
Student Contributors
SINGAPORE AMERICAN SCHOOL
Will Mundy
Skype Buddies Coordinator, Website developer
Vincent Tantra
Website Developer & Designer